Land sales and the transformation of social relations and landscape in peri-urban Mali

Small-scale land acquisitions are transforming long-standing human-land relations in West Africa. In particular, high rates of urban population growth lead to the transfer of land from non-market customary tenure systems to market-based, formal land tenure regimes on the edges of cities. The literature suggests that the conversion process from inalienable land to private property is highly contested, locally specific, and historically contingent. However, little is known about how this process affects a community. In the Kati cercle on Bamako's peri-urban eastern edge with exponential growth in land registration, this village case study examines: (1) how residents secure livelihoods, and (2) how the advent of a land market affects livelihood strategies. Interviews conducted in 2011 in the village of Soro complement data collected in 1996 and 1987. The longitudinal data show increases in population as well as indicators of relatively stable livelihood strategies. Since 2001 only men in the chieftancy lineage and families close to it have sold land, and that land was of least value to them using the subsistence logic of grain production. Those authorizing land sales at the local level are also the immediate beneficiaries. Land privatization reduces access to resources for those with secondary land rights recognized through social relations in a customary tenure system. This study concludes that public policy in areas undergoing land conversion - especially peri-urban areas - should consider the impact of social differentiation in communities and how new land values will change land use and access.

► Peri-urban land sales provide immediate income to some but not all villagers. ► Sale of village land will jeopardize land access for those with secondary land rights. ► Land sales to urban residents remove land permanently from farming systems based in non-market social relations. ► In a case study village, decentralization is leading to a market culture as land becomes a commodity.